Contents

Author

What this does

Tilting the Hokuyo using a servo and reading back the servo encoder position while getting scans from the Hokuyo allows us to generate a 3D point cloud of the world in front of the robot. We have used this 3D point cloud for object segmentation, door handle detection etc.

We first used this sensor in this paper: EL-E: An Assistive Mobile Manipulator that Autonomously Fetches Objects from Flat Surfaces. Advait Jain and Charles C. Kemp. Autonomous Robots, 2009 [To Appear]. This paper and others can be downloaded from the Heathcare Robotics Lab website (http://www.healthcare-robotics.com)

Sample Point Clouds

Pictures of the Setup

Servo Tilting the UTM

Firefly Camera, UTM and Servo (left to right)

Alternate Configuration

Hardware

Image of the solidworks part for the bracket to mount the UTM on to the servo.